Everyone had been ready to find the room filled to the brim with high-ranking cultivators. Willing to die to defend their emperor, and his honor, almost suicidal in their zealously.

“I’m honestly at a loss for words… I thought I had a good half hour until you broke through,” the lone man said.

He was relatively tall, about Hound’s height, dressed in a clean white shirt and trousers, with a small leather satchel hanging off his left side. He was standing near the vacant throne and seemed to have been doing something to the seat.

The man gestured at Lion, then at Hound, and then at Owl.

“The strong warrior, the sneaky rogue, and the wise mage. Most can barely get one, and you have all three. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t just a bit jealous,” the man continued, as Sylver cocked his head.

Something about this man felt familiar.

“You can’t do this,” Aurick said in a tense, but calm, voice.

The man rolled his eyes at Aurick’s words.

“He’s gone, isn’t he…” Owl said in a defeated voice.

None of them were drawing their weapons, Hound had even gone as far as to put his sword away, the only people still armed were Abby, her witches, and Sylver, who was holding his ax in his hand.

“Normally I’d make a joke about how telling it is that your most perceptive member is the blind guy, but I’m not really in a laughing mood right now. The dragon is mere hours away from prying open what’s left of its cage. You came here planning to kill the emperor, but at any point in time, did any of you stop to consider the consequences?” the man asked.

Previously, the feeling in the room was a mixture of confusion, courtesy of Sylver and the witches, and resignation, courtesy of Aurick’s group.

But now, everyone was confused.

“Dragon?” Lion asked, with the sort of almost carelessness that can only come from ignorance.

The man made a strange gesture with his hands, as if he had grabbed something invisible in front of him, and tried to crush it, but changed his mind.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds and seemed to realize there were other people in the room aside from Aurick’s group. He pointed at Abby, and then slowly moved his hand and gaze towards Sylver.

“You’re the witches that live in the swamp, I know about you. But who…”

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

“Huh…” the man said, as Sylver tightened his grip on his ax.

The man didn’t look particularly menacing, if it weren’t for the strange tumbling Sylver’s stomach was doing, he would have lowered his guard the moment Aurick had.

“Hmm… You know what, it’s fine, I don’t want to know, because I don’t care,” the man said with a shrug of his shoulders, as Sylver realized who he was talking to.

The man was using very subtle magic, not enough to obscure his whole body, but just enough to muddle the edges. Sylver couldn’t say what his face looked like, and now that he was aware of it, he could tell it wasn’t just because of his face blindness.

The man he was talking to was the [Jester Hero], Alyosha Popovich.

The [Hero] who gave Lola the sword contorted because of Edmund’s mana. The one he used magic to trick Lola into thinking the sword she was trading for belonged to her mother.

“What dragon are you talking about?” Lion asked, but the man, Alyosha, seemed to somehow know Sylver knew who he was. He didn’t stop staring at him, and despite his cautious nature, Sylver stared back.

Alyosha spoke without looking away from Sylver.

“The dragon that is, for the time being, trapped underground. The one that made it rain blood,” Alyosha answered with clear annoyance.

“Can we stop it?” Aurick asked.

He sounded like a child. Like a child that broke an expensive vase and was now suggesting they just glue it back together.

“See, that’s the difference between us. A real [Hero] would have known not to bring the girl here. A real [Hero] wouldn’t have needed to pay a bunch of witches to cause a plague that has already killed thousands. A real [Hero] shows up in areas that are in trouble, trouble, mind you, that he himself didn’t orchestrate,” Alyosha scolded.

He took an exhausted deep breath and looked at the slightly frightened witches.

“You girls should probably get back home and pack up as best as you can. In about…” Alyosha closed his eyes for a moment, “2 hours, 41 minutes, you’ll be able to leave. And by leave, I mean the Schlagen mountain area.”

The witches remained where they were while Sylver unsummoned the ax in his hand, and while staring straight into Alyosha’s eyes, walked towards him. He knew what exactly was going on once he was 5 steps away from the completely fearless man.

But just to be sure, Sylver moved his arm through Alyosha’s torso. They had been speaking to what could be categorized as an illusion.

“I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere…” Alyosha said, as Sylver walked past him, and leaned down to look at what he had been doing to the throne’s seat.

“I get that a lot, just one of those faces,” Sylver mumbled, as he hovered his hand over the seat, and felt hot prickly needles sear the palm of his hand.

“Might be…” Alyosha said, but he didn’t even try to sound convinced.

“How do we stop it?” Owl asked, with an uncharacteristically meek voice.

“You’re asking me as if I would be allowed to tell you, even if I knew. I do have one question for you,” Alyosha said, as he stopped staring at the back of Sylver’s head, and locked eyes with Aurick.

“We won’t stop,” Aurick said, while Alyosha simply shrugged his shoulders.

“I know. But I thought maybe there’s finally enough innocent blood on your hands for you to at the very least take a moment to reconsider. Doesn’t some small piece of you feel bad about all the lives you’ve taken by hiring these women to spread a sleeping plague over this land?” Alyosha asked, as Sylver slowly lowered his hand until he was touching the edge of the carved seat.

He had never missed Faust quite as much as he did right now.

“If we didn’t destabilize the upper echelons of the-”

“It is amazing how deeply that wiretap has sunk its claws into you. You’re not just going along with it, you genuinely believe everything it’s told you,” Alyosha interrupted, with a curt gesture at the book in Aurick’s hand.

“What are you trying to do?” Ria tapped against the back of Sylver’s shoulder.

“I need to find a weakness,” Sylver tapped back, as a tendril of liquid gold slithered out of his sleeve, and formed itself into a golden nail, pressed up against a seemingly empty spot in the upper right corner of the carved design.

Sylver didn’t need to ask whether Ria was sure, because, at this point, her guess was as good as his. If anything, considering she had read Faust’s notes at least 50 times since he left them, her guess was better than Sylver’s.

“Are you sure we haven’t met somewhere?” Alyosha asked Sylver, as Sylver stood up from his crouch, and summoned his ax into his hand.

“I’m sure,” Sylver said, as he lifted the ax high above his head. He turned it a bit so the flat part would hit the nail, and not the blade. “You would have remembered me if we had.”

He could feel it happening, even as the ax began moving downward.

A shivering disruption in the primal energy surrounding Sylver’s body.

Sylver had lived long enough that he had experienced these “once in a lifetime” events, multiple times. Events that in 1,000 years would be used to mark the beginning of something.

Or the end, depending on the outcome.

Sylver felt it the moment Aether had been born, even though he was quite literally on the other side of the planet.

He felt the moment when his demon summoning books went from being a minor inconvenience, a distraction, to a full-blown apocalypse.

And he felt that very same feeling right now.

The nail entered maybe half a centimeter into the stone. There wasn’t some grand bolt of lightning, signifying the end of the world, no one was screaming, no fireworks went off, and if you ignored the blood dripping down from the ceiling, and flowing down the walls, nothing happened.

For 10 whole seconds, nobody moved a muscle.

Nobody made a sound, no one dared to so much as breathe.

Ria pulled her nail away from the throne and slithered back into Sylver’s sleeve and staff while Sylver unsummoned his ax.

“Best of luck with everything,” Sylver said, with a slight wave towards Alyosha Popovich, Aurick’s group, and the completely in shock witches.

There was a small hole in the ceiling that Sylver utilized to get out of the room via [Fog Form].

It was still raining outside, but as Sylver looked up he saw the clouds were already dissipating, he saw that the blood currently raining down on him was about to stop.

Maybe a minute passed, but it was probably closer to half a minute, it just felt longer, because Sylver’s hearts were up in his throat.

His “guess” that the throne was the equivalent of a control panel for the barrier surrounding the country, and thereby the cage the dragon was trapped inside, wasn’t exactly a “guess.” Even if Sylver wasn’t all that familiar with Ki frameworks, his gut seemed to be.

Not to mention the throne is usually what controls any kind of country-wide spell.

Part of the reason he rushed to action was that he didn’t want to spend another second with the [Jester Hero] staring at him, but that was a very small fraction of Sylver’s reasoning.

Aurick was a fake [Hero]. At least that was what Sylver had understood from Aurick’s interaction with the extremely real [Jester Hero].

There was no point trying to talk to Aurick, or the [Jester Hero], the person Sylver needed to sit down and talk to, was Poppy.

Or actually… Chrys might have an inkling… With Rose’s eye and all, surely, she would be able to feel something as massive as a nearly world-ending disaster…

Sylver’s foot tapped against the sticky ground, as he stared down towards the middle of the Schlagen mountains.

Any time now…

“What happened to not making them your enemies?” Ria asked.

Sylver didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“I’m not their enemy. Our whole thing was to get the emperor, and since the emperor is gone, our deal is off… Look, the bottom line is, there are certain people you can’t reason with. And instead of wasting my time trying to get a clear answer out of them, I’ll go to the source so to speak,” Sylver explained, as he watched the base of the barrier become a touch more transparent.

“I see,” Ria answered dryly.

“Do you remember how I said that if someone is telling you a prophecy, and you don’t like what you’re hearing, you should punch them until they stop talking?” Sylver asked.

“I take it this a continuation of that advice?” Ria asked.

“Exactly. Remember that you are always free to leave if you don’t like what’s happening around you. You just have to be quick about it. Or punch them, it depends on the circumstances,” Sylver said.

Sylver hadn’t blinked once since he started watching for the dragon, and yet, he missed it.

It didn’t erupt from the blood-soaked ground like some sort of scaled volcano, it didn’t send chunks of red rock flying high into the sky, it didn’t even make any sound.

It just appeared above ground. One fraction of a second it wasn’t there, and the next, it was.

Sylver felt every fiber of his being seize up as the dragon grabbed hold of every droplet of mana in the surrounding area. He remained that way for what felt like years, it wasn’t just that his body was an inescapable cocoon, his mind was the same.

Even the feeling of pain traveled so unbearably slowly through Sylver’s head, that by the time it arrived, there was already a queue of thoughts waiting for their turn.

It was the sort of inescapable intrusion that almost made finding Edmund not worth it.

When Sylver came to his senses, he found that the dragon was gone.

Ria would later tell him that the creature had spread its horrifyingly pale wings, which looked so brittle that she worried they would tear before they allowed the creature flight.

But despite Ria’s concerns, the creature flew with such a great speed that Ria had prepared for a gust of air to send Sylver’s body flying. But no gust of wind came, if Ria hadn’t been looking right at it, she wouldn’t have been aware that a dragon had been there at all.

The dragon was simply… gone.

It didn’t cause a fuss and simply left.

High above, the clouds raining blood gradually escaped their dome-shaped confines and began to thin and spread along the open sky. Sylver watched as a soft fluffy white cloud collided with the pitch-black blood cloud and didn’t like the way the black cloud merged with the white one.

But it wasn’t an immediate problem.

Sylver was still not fully here, and as he tried to take a step back, he tripped over something, and then fell backward, and smashed the back of his skull on the edge of something extremely hard. He heard a crack, and if the blood leaking into his brain was an indicator, the crack came from him.

He waited for the world to stop spinning for a while, before his robe gathered under him, and lifted his limp doll of a body to its feet.

Sylver turned around to look at the object and saw a larger metallic rectangular box.

There wasn’t any confusion on his part as to what he was looking at because he knew this box better than the person laying inside of it.

Even though it technically belonged to Ed, Sylver had always been the one who carried it.

Sylver ran his hand along the groove his shoulder had created over the many many journeys he’d spent carrying this thing.

With his hand on the clasp, Sylver waited a moment and did something he very rarely did and asked Igri for his blessing.

Sylver had to use his free hand to wipe the tears forming in his eyes, as he completely opened the clasp.

The lid opened silently, Sylver might not have been the world’s greatest craftsman, but he took pride in everything he did, and that included making a coffin for his dearest friend.

The body inside the coffin looked as if it was simply asleep, as opposed to dead. It was old, far older than Edmund normally allowed himself to get, but it was, unmistakably, him. This wasn’t a clone, a relative, from the curly beard to his stupid fuzzy eyebrows, down to this soul, this was without a single doubt, Edmund.

Sylver lost feeling in his legs as he fell next to the box, and for who knows how long, just lay there crying tears of joy.

He still needed to perform the resurrection ritual, but Ed’s body was already teetering on the edge of life, Sylver wouldn’t be surprised if a campfire would be enough to wake him up.

Sylver closed the lid on the coffin, redid the clasp, and without even thinking about it, slung it over his shoulder.

With teary eyes and the biggest grin on his face since he took over Ciege’s body, Sylver made his way towards Faust’s sect.

He couldn’t bring himself to care about what had occurred today, because, for the first time in what felt like forever, he wasn’t alone.